#bros lecce

[sleepy-bebby]

[ninebaalart]

Fun and Fancy Free Foods

[yekokataa]

watching The Menu (2022) really reminded me of this story from last year

[pleatedjeans]

Woman Roasts 27-Course Meal In Hilariously Honest Review Of Michelin Starred Restaurant (19 Pics)

[han-merlin]

THIS IS A FUCKING MESS I'M FUCKING LOSING IT???

OLI RED CARD

I'M SCREAMING

THEO HAS NEVER RUN SO FUCKING FAST IN HIS LIFE BRO BOLTED ACROSS THE SCREEN IN A BLUR TO GET TO THE REF AND SCREAM

AND LECCE SCORED FROM THE RESULTING FREE KICK IM KILLING MYSELF

[thenineofus]

I'm gonna reread the Bros., Lecce review

[forzadiavoloale]

io comunque sono basita da come dicano tutti che il gol del lecce fosse regolare quando c'era un evidente step on foot, cioè in che senso bro

[zephiraz]

Tumblr crashed when I tried to reblog that post about the weird restaurant with a link to the chef's response, so I'm just posting it here.

This article has the chef's response in its entirety.

[semperrgumby]

plus the chef of Bros says shit like "siamo nella fase umamica" and "facciamo il kaiseki Salento" like fuck off pretentious twat I don't even want to hear you misappropriate japanese culinary terms again bitch

[weaver-z]

You can look at something avant-garde and decide that it's still not art. That is the nature of subjectivity. Saying that someone who analyzes a work and decides that it isn't a worthwhile piece of art is "living in spiritual poverty" is the height of weird, pretentious tripe.

This post is a reference to Megapope's response to the picture I shared of a particularly bizarre and sexual plating of a foam dish at a Michelin Star Italian restaurant from a travel blogger's article. The funny thing is, I have eaten at a Michelin Star restaurant where we were served small, rich plates (several that included foam!), and it was incredible, fascinating, and delicious. Who knew that I could enjoy a seafood ice cream? I do now--it was amazing. If we're analyzing food as we analyze art, avant-garde food is meant to challenge the consumer, and my own tastes were challenged that night.

But my appreciation for an incredible dining experience does not mean that I am required to look at any piece of "art" served in an avant-garde restaurant and appreciate it simply for the fact that it's daring, challenging, or "pushing boundaries." Serving your guests foam in a plaster cast of the chef's mouth is weird. It is okay to turn off your brain's Master Artist and laugh at a very off-putting thing served in a restaurant, as well as other things mentioned in the article. The waiters berating a guest for getting up from the table, the diners being led to a dark room where they watched a video of the waiters doing extreme sports, one guest getting in trouble for accidentally eating a garnish--all of these are funny.

I'm not a culinary expert, but I am an avid lover of literature. If someone less experimental than myself read part of House of Leaves before saying "this is stupid; I hate the formatting," I would not flip out and tell them that they were living in spiritual poverty. I would understand that certain forms of art aren't for everyone. This is normal and expected. Chill.

[lamajaoscura]

Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever | by Geraldine DeRuiter | Dec, 2021 | Medium

[spankymerve]

What I've Been Reading: December 12, 2021

What I’ve Been Reading: December 12, 2021

We’ve got a lot to cover this week: Paramore; terrible restaurants; and Internet “sleuths,” among other topics. So let’s just dive right in and see what happens. (more…)

[copperbadge]

I think I found the Justin Hammer experience in Foodieverse). It's the mouth that seals it... https://everywhereist.com/2021/12/bros-restaurant-lecce-we-eat-at-the-worst-michelin-starred-restaurant-ever/

I've been tagged in this story a couple of times and I've kind of been waiting to discuss it because I knew once it started making mainstream news that the Bros folks would have to respond. Which they did, with an amusingly overwrought essay by one of the chefs (link below in the Today article).

More than anything I'm curious about a lot of context we don't have. Geraldine DeRuiter, who wrote the initial essay, is apparently experienced in fine dining, so the meal must have been pretty bad, because a) this looks like a lot of stuff I've seen featured on high-end and moga restaurant pages before, b) some of the dishes (the rancid ricotta, edible fish paper, the cuttlefish gelatin) have been on the restaurant's facebook page as featured dishes, so they've been around a while, and c) extremely long meals composed entirely of tasting flights with no main isn't...like, super weird, at that level of dining. (Although apparently they got 27 courses when they expected 13, so that's...certainly something.) So it appears that this isn't a question of culture conflict, that DeRuiter knew what she was getting into.

That being the case, I believe that the food itself must have been truly awful. Absolutely the issue with the allergens -- just plain not feeding a person with allergies -- is really out of this world bad. Restaurants at that level generally either happily accommodate dietary needs or completely refuse to even consider it and state so loudly and repeatedly so you won't go there. To say you will do it and then not do it is the kind of thing that can lose you a Michelin star, because exceptional service is a part of the rating. But given that some of what was discussed was reasonably to be expected given the dining situation, like...that must have been some really bad food.

So that leaves me to wonder what the deal with the restaurant itself is. Are they dealing with a service/labor shortage like much of the world? Did something happen to the chef and someone else filled in? Or did something go drastically wrong in the kitchen?

I feel like Today did a really good job of covering the story and to their credit reprinted the essay by Chef Pellegrino in its entirety per his request. What stood out to me in the article was that the essay was written by Chef Pellegrino, but DeRuiter didn't go there to eat his food -- she went there because she'd heard great things about one of the other chefs, Isabella Poti. One does wonder if perhaps she had the night off and has been rather carrying Bros on her own for a while.

But the behavior of the waitstaff suggests that this is a more structural issue, that either something has gone very wrong at Bros very recently, or that it's a long-term case of the emperor having no clothes, of DeRuiter just being the first person to point out that "rancido" dish, which has been on the menu as far back as summer 2021, is rancid cheese. (It looks like it's actually cheese in a rancid butter sauce.)

One even wonders if perhaps the greater level of attention we've all been paying to food service because of the pandemic has allowed a certain class of diner to finally puncture the flimsy pretenses of upscale restaurants. Certainly Pellegrino's defense of his food as something that asks complicated questions and doesn't serve up shallow "boring great master in a museum" meals does not incline me to think he's considering the nutritive or flavor value of his food. But it's not like I haven't seen that precise level of pretention before in plenty of Michelin-star restaurants (everything Grant Achatz does comes to mind). What he's saying is not new if you pay attention to high-end dining and the critic-chef forever war that plays out in newspaper reviews all the time. Perhaps we're just simply done with eating figurative bullshit?

Or something else is going on. I'd love to know what.

Overall, I do think it's important to remember that while it's not good to serve bad food, to ignore allergy requirements, or to write nonsense about it once caught in the act, these are human beings playing out a truly minor drama on a fucking world stage. Whether or not Bros is a bad restaurant, I don't know that it really deserves the worldwide scorn being heaped on it. There's a story there that I want to see, but I don't want to see these people tormented by millions of twitter users in the meantime. So while I think it's fair to discuss it and I hope I've done so fairly here, I want to remind everyone that when you do, it pays to be civil, cautious, and kind.

[itsyveinthesky]

I BEG YOU READ THIS. 

Also eternal thanks to @paladinquen for linking this masterpiece.

[recuperationdisliker]

[wearing a dark trenchcoat and sunglasses like a y2k goth] i have no strong opinions on the michelin star restaurant "bros" in lecce, italy